


Together

by ToAStranger



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-02
Updated: 2015-09-02
Packaged: 2018-04-18 15:05:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,018
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4710338
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ToAStranger/pseuds/ToAStranger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's hard to face what happened alone.  Sam doesn't have to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Together

After the interrogation— _interview_ , the lead detective had insisted, _it’s just an interview_ —they are taken to the nearest hospital.  Jessica is in the worst shape out of all of them; they cart her away to a critical care until the second that they arrive and Chris tells them he overhears something about frostbite and feet and a punctured lung.  Mike’s head goes heavy between his shoulders when Chris says that, and stays that way until a nurse comes to collect him in order to get an X-ray of his left hand.

One by one, they are all picked off.  A doctor comes to take Emily to clean the bite at her neck and insists on giving her rabies shots despite Emily’s vehement protests against needles.  Two nurses help Chris hobble away; Ashley follows, ice pack pressed to her face, promising to be the first to sign his cast if his ankles turns out to be broken.  Then they cart Matt off, to treats his abrasions, burns, cuts. 

Sam watches him go and thinks that, while Matt had reasonably escaped with the least amount of physical trauma, he would ultimately have to deal with Emily’s third degree for a while; a kind of emotional wound that would undoubtedly fester for long after he had healed.  He glances back at her just before being guided around a corner, and Sam offers a weak smile and wave before he disappears and she is alone. 

She’s by herself for what seems like a long time.  Her eyes stay low as people go by, studying her hands, tracing over the dirt, the blood, and scrapes across her palms.  The wool blanket over her shoulders feels suddenly far too heavy, and she shrugs it away despite the chill still in her bones and the wet cold still clinging to her clothes from the cavern in the dark beneath the surface of Blackwood.  Her chest feels tight at the memory.  She tries to close her eyes and take a deep breath, but when she does, all she sees are the bodies and Josh’s terrified face and the _thing_ that Hannah had turned into and—

“Samantha?”

Her eyes open.  An older, greying man gives her a small, delicate smile but his brows are pinched in a concerned way that makes her frown.  She realizes dimly that she’s trembling.

“I’m Dr. O’Malley.  I’d like you to come with me now,” he says.

She pushes to her feet, body aching, and she nods.  “Lead the way.”

He does.

In a room lined with hospital beds on either side, Sam finds Mike getting his fingers placed in a brace and taped together.  She lingers close, and Dr. O’Malley must get the picture because he guides her over to the cot right next to him despite the half down other empty ones. 

They power through the usual processes.  Dr. O’Malley checks Sam over thoroughly with the care and deftness of someone who has been in the profession for a long time.  When he’s finished, he pats her knee like she’s a child and not nearly twenty years old before telling her that she’ll be fine, that the nurse will see to her shortly, and that they’re keeping them all at the hospital for a night of observation.  He points to the starched medical gown folded neatly on top of the sanitized sheets behind her and tells Sam to change in the bathroom across the hall in order to get out of her wet clothes.

“Thank you,” she says, and he gives her another tight smile before leaving.

Sam sits there on the edge of the cot for a while.  Sits there and watches the nurse patch Mike up.  When he’s done, he moves over to Sam with a lopsided grin that she’s sure is meant to be comforting.  He cleans her cuts before bandaging them—fresh gauze and medical tape itchy against her skin.  She sits patiently, quietly, and knows that Mike is watching the nurse help her with a keen gaze.  Her tongue feels too heavy in her mouth to tease him, and she wonders if Mike is silent for the same reasons that she is—too tired to speak, too beaten to try, too broken to pretend.

She looks away when the nurse’s steady hands become too tedious to keep watching.  Her gaze meets Mike’s.  He hesitates, hovers, and she gives a slow nod of her head and a weak smile before turning her attentions back to the nurse as he asks her to roll her pant leg up.  To her left there is a rustle, a quiet groan, and then the sound of retreating footsteps.

By the time the nurse is done with her—rubbing a salve over her skinned knee and taping a bandage in place, having her unzip out of her jacket to get at the gash across her shoulder—she is sitting on the cot in nothing but her sneakers, her yoga pants, and her bra.  Mike falters in the doorway, only moving when the nurse brushes by, and he looks endearingly awkward standing there in nothing but a teal gown and some socks—his soiled clothes clutched tight to his chest.  Sam bites the inside of her cheek as he hobbles across the room and pulls himself up onto the bed next to hers.  In the doorway, their nurse tells them to hit the button on their beds if they need anything and to get some rest. 

“Nice threads,” she drolls when they’re alone and for the first time in what seems like forever, Mike laughs.

“You’re not looking too bad yourself,” he tells her.

She glances down at herself and her cheeks go pink.  Sliding from the bed, she snatches up the gown and pulls it on as she toes out of her shoes with a wet squelch. 

“Sam,” Mike starts, sighing.  “I didn’t—I was just—“

“I’m cold,” she says.  “And I—I pretty much want to burn these clothes.  I swear, if I have to sit in them for one more second, I’m gonna peal my own skin off—“

“Sam,” Mike interrupts her, smile soft and fond.  “I get it.  It’s okay.”

She pauses, pants already halfway down her thighs.  “Right.  Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” he repeats.

Kicking her pants the rest of the way off, she reaches around behind herself to start doing up the ties of her gown.  About halfway up, she winces and hisses; Mike’s brows draw into a tight pinch.

“Hey,” he mutters, already pushing off his cot stiffly.

Sam cringes, side and shoulder throbbing, and tries for the ties again.

“Hey, hey, whoa.  Let me help.”

“I’ve got it,” she insists.

“Sam,” Mike chides, hands out—one injured, one not—and brows up.  “Come on.”

She sighs, arms dropping limp at her sides.  “I’m so tired, Mike.”

“I know,” he says, voice low.  “Me too.”

Her lips thin as she looks up at him, wavering for a long moments before turning about with a roll of her eyes.  Mike shuffles close.  His fingers are slow, careful, steady.  He ties up the back of her gown, and when he is done, lays a tentative hand on her good shoulder.

“You should rest,” he tells her.

Sam nods.  “Yeah.  _We_ should rest.”

Glancing over her shoulder at him, she lifts an expressive brow.  He huffs out a tight cough of a laugh and nods, hands going up in surrender.

“We should rest,” he repeats.

They climb into their respective beds, both of them a bit stiff and incredibly ginger.  Sam knows, laying there on her back, that she should give in to the drugs the nurse had given her and try to sleep, but the idea of seeing remnants of that mountain are too daunting for her to be swayed.  She knows, without looking, that Mike is going the same thing; staring at the ceiling and hoping that all of this, everything, had been some sort of nightmare.

* * *

 

The videos go viral.

They don’t know how, don’t know who, but the footage Josh took of them all up on Blackwood is uploaded in crude splices.  It is up for forty-eight hours before the authorities can take it down, but by that point it has done all the damage necessary.  There have already been nearly a million views, and the footage has been downloaded and reposted in a dozen other places.  There’s no getting rid of it now that it is out there. 

Emily’s father threatens a hefty lawsuit against whoever the original perpetuator was.  When they track down the signal and find out that it was all done remotely, automatically, from Josh’s computer at home in Beverly Hills—on and receiving a constant signal and stream of data from their arrival up until the explosion—he drops the legal action.  Josh’s parents are grieving; Emily’s father isn’t completely heartless.

“This is disgusting,” Sam slams her laptop shut, but the image of Josh standing there in that mask watching her in the bath is branded somewhere the soft tissue of her brain. 

It has only been a week since everything has happened.  She is home, with her parents, until after the funeral. 

Her father had been trying to convince her to stay home and take a semester off in order to heal, in order to give them a piece of mind.  The option is beginning to look more and more appealing.

“They think it’s a publicity stunt,” Mike tells her on a sigh, static crackling over the line, and Sam switches ears with her phone. 

Sam wheels around in her desk chair, jaw ticking tight.  “But it’s _not_.  It _happened_.  It all _happened_.”

“ _We_ know that,” Mike says.  “But I can’t—Hell, Sam, I was there and I can barely believe what happened.  I saw those things with my own eyes.  Fought them.  _Killed_ them—“

“I know, Mike, I was there too.” She snaps, terse, throat tight. 

There’s a pause, another sigh, and Mike’s voice goes soft.  “Then you know how—how _unbelievable_ it all is.”

Sam’s gaze drops to her lap as she tucks her feet up underneath herself.  “I know how real it was.  I know… I know how scared I was—how angry, how _hurt_ —“

“Sam,” Mike breathes.  “It’s—I can’t say it’s going to be okay because all of this is beyond fucked up, but… We’ll get through this.”

Sam tips her head back and blinks a few times.  Her eyes are burning, and she has to clear her throat past the sensation. 

“I don’t want to have to get through anything,” she confesses, slumped in her chair, watching the fan on her ceiling spin round and round.  “We’ve been through enough.  We shouldn’t have to get through anything else.”

“I know,” Mike says.  “I know, but we have to.”

Sam presses her lips into a thin line.

“We have to, Sam.”

* * *

 

The funeral is everything that people expected.  There are reporters huddled outside of the cathedral where the Washingtons decided to hold the ceremony, and Sam has to duck through them in order to even get through the front doors.  They manage to flash a couple of pictures of her before Matt comes out of nowhere and takes her by the elbow, and they push their way through side by side.

“They’re like rats,” he sneers once they’re inside, tugging his suit coat lapels flat over his chest. 

“They’re worse than rats,” Sam mumbles.

He huffs out a tight laugh and nods.  “How have you been?”

“Not good,” she says, earnest, and shrugs a shoulder.  “You?”

“About the same,” Matt nods.  “We should—“

“Yeah,” Sam forces a smile and follows after him deeper into the church.

At the front, by the cherry wood coffin, stand Josh’s parents.  Chris is up there, talking to them in low tones, and Mrs. Washington pulls him into a tearful embrace. 

Sam forces her gaze away, can’t really take looking at them or the shiny coffin she knows is empty.  Instead, she searches the pews.  Her fingers curl tight over small clutch in her hands as she spots Ashley and her family sitting next to Emily.  Across from them is Mike, sitting by himself, and Sam excuses herself from Matt’s side with a polite smile before navigating her way through the small crowd of people to slide into the wooden pew at his side.

He doesn’t look up when Sam sits down next to him.  His left leg is bouncing, restless, and he stares straight forward at the bench seat in front of them.  The bruise that had been purpling his face is yellowing around the edges; finally fading like a bad dream.  Sam whispers his name, but he doesn’t reply, rubbing a hand over his mouth, the other still clunky and pinched in a metal brace resting in his lap. 

“Hey,” she says, more insistent, reaching out to him and flinching when he met her gaze with a distraught expression.  “What is it?” she asks.

“I—Nothing—I just—“ He clears his throat, eyes straying to Josh’s parents, and he leans in close to Sam.  “It’s my fault, Sam.  That he’s not here.  I could’ve—I should have gone after him—“

“Mike,” Sam places her hand over his and squeezes at his good fingers.  “It isn’t your fault.”

His eyes flit over her face, searching for something.  Blame, perhaps, or deception.  He doesn’t find whatever it is that he wants, but maybe it’s what he needs because Mike curls his fingers tight around Sam’s. 

They don’t say another word through the entire procession, sitting side by side, hands intertwined.

* * *

 

"When are you heading back?" Mike asks from his perch at the foot of Sam's bed, tracking her as she paces back and forth from her closet to her suitcase. 

"This weekend," Sam tells him.  "I'm already way too far behind on work.  Midterms are soon." 

"You need a road trip buddy?" 

Sam pauses in the middle of folding a shirt.  "You want to drive up with me?" 

"If you're willing," Mike shrugs. 

"Uh, yeah.  Sure." Sam nods, smile flitting over her face.  "I'd like that, actually." 

Mike grins, bright and genuine, but dips his head as he nods as if to try and hide it from her.  "Alright.  Awesome."

"Yeah," Sam mutters, swallowing down the teasing remark that tingles at the back of her mouth, and turns her focus back on folding her clothes.  "How is, uh... How's Jess?" 

"Oh," Mike makes a face, nose wrinkling.  "She's um... good?  Better, anyways.  She's staying home through the spring semester." 

"That's good.  Are you two still...?"

"No," Mike shakes his head.  "That... I mean, kinda hard to top a date where we nearly died a bunch of times." 

Sam shot him a dry look, and Mike winced, palm running over his scalp. 

"That sounded better in my head," he mumbles. 

"I'm sure it did," Sam hides a soft laugh against the back of her hand.  

He throws one of her pillows at her, and she bats it away with another bought of laughter.  

* * *

She has nightmares.  Reoccurring dreams where she's back in those mines, trying to find Josh, and failing.  She has nightmares that echo with those screams, with the smell of rotting flesh, with that white, glazed look in Hannah's eyes, in Josh's.  

"Sam." 

There are ones where she gets caught in the fire and burns up with the cabin.  Ones where she gets pulled beneath the black surface of the water where they found Beth's body and Hannah's journal.  Ones where she goes back and finds Josh with his face half decayed, with these teeth like razors, with a scream that sounds like children dying. 

" _Sam._ " 

Mike jostles her awake from the driver's seat, brows pinched.  She gasps in a stuttering breath, skin covered in a cold sweat, and she presses back against the passenger door as though Mike is attacking her and not rousing her from the terror of her own mind.  His right hand stays firm on her shoulder, and she looks around before realization settles in.  

They're pulled off on the side of highway one, the cliffs leading down to a crash of waves along the pacific shoreline.  Their luggage in piled in the back of the car.  The clear blue skies are a stark contrast to the dark cold that's still twisting somewhere in her head.  She swallows past the thickness in her throat and shudders, hand coming up to clutch at Mike's wrist.  

"I'm okay," she tells him. 

"No, you're not." 

He draws her close, across the gear shift between them, and wraps his arms around her tight.  They stay like that, clinging to one another, for a very long time.  Her fingers dig into the soft cotton of his shirt, and his nose presses to her temple. 

She finds solace in the quiet between them.  In the way his arm wind more securely around her.  In the way he seems to breathe her in and take relief in the fact that she's there, right there, with him.  It eases her frayed nerves enough for her to go easy against him, accepting the heat he offered and feeling warm for the first time since she stepped foot off of Blackwood mountain. 

"We should get going," she tells him, but she doesn't pull away.  "I don't want to be trapped in this car all day." 

He nods, lips tentative against her cheek.  "Gotta get there before it gets dark." 

"Please," she breathes, eyes shutting, leaning into the affection.

"I won't let anything happen to you, Sam." He tells her, kisses her cheek again, and Sam shivers.  

Sam smiles, and thinks it's probably true.  "I won't let anything happen to you either." 

Mike laughs, pulling back just enough, their noses bumping.  They don't do anything more.  They aren't ready for anything more. 

"I know," he says, thumb dragging over her cheekbone.  "We'll get through this." 

Sam nods.  "Together." 

"Together," Mike repeats.  

He doesn't kiss her.  Just pulls back and starts the car before shifting back into drive.  He doesn't kiss her, but she knows.  


End file.
